Filmmakers have never been shy in mining all manner of forms, art- or otherwise, for their inspiration – and now we have, in Stephen Frears’ latest, Tamara Drewe, a work which began its life as a newspaper comic strip! (Written by Posy Simmonds, it appeared in the Guardian review section in 2005/6.) “But it’s not the first,” I hear you cry. No, indeed, it’s not. Let’s see: Garfield; Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties; Jane and the Lost City; Marmaduke... I’m not really selling the genre, am I? Modesty Blaise; Snoopy Come Home; A Boy Called Charlie Brown... that’s better. So, not the first, but, I shall posit, the best. (Whilst we’re on the subject, I think Scotland is very well placed to make a great contribution to this genre: Oor Wullie The Movie anybody? Or even Oor Wullie vs. The Broons...)

Enough with the apparent faint praise for Tamara Drewe, for the film went down a deserved storm in Cannes, I recall, earlier this year, and, as The Guardian itself put it, had the audience “whooping, laughing and gasping at the story’s sly wit, sexy rural shenanigans and moments of darkness.” I know this to be true, I was there! [Blimey, it must be, what, two months since you mentioned Cannes in this column? Sheesh... - Ed.]

Sylvain (Belleville Rendezvous) Chomet’s achingly beautiful animation, The Illusionist (which opened EIFF this year), graces our screens this month. Based on an unproduced script by Jacques Tati, the film is literally a love letter to our gorgeous city, which provides a stunningly rendered backdrop to a melancholy tale of a vaudeville magician whose era has passed. And just before you think we might have gone all fluffy and soft with our gentle(ish) British comedy and our animated paean to times past, enfant terrible Gaspar (Seul Contre Tous, Irreversible) Noé is back with this latest opus, the ... how should I describe it ... violent, infuriating, immersive, narcotic, indulgent, dazzling Enter the Void. Enter at your peril...

In Buenos Aires in 2008 occurred the ‘Holy Grail’ of lost film finds – 25 minutes of footage excised from the original release version of Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi epic Metropolis, which can now be seen as the director originally intended for the first time in 83 years, beautifully restored and reconstructed. Black Dynamite is a hilarious, homage-spoof to blaxploitation films of the 70s (any film with a character called ‘Cream Corn’ is OK by me!), and Abbas Kiarostami returns with his Juliette Binoche-starring Cannes competition entry, the intriguing Certified Copy.

Our annual Take One Action Film Festival springs into, ahem, action (as will you, hopefully, after having been inspired by the films!) and we’ve a visit on September 7 from Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who’ll be here to present and talk about his extraordinary film, Home0. And, in a collaboration with our friends at the National Galleries of Scotland, we’re delighted to present an extensive survey of Surrealism in film, which we’ve called Screening Surrealism, heroically avoiding the usual swapping of ‘Real’ for ‘Reel’ so prevalent in film season nomenclature these days!